The stronger political focus on a territorial dimension in policy highlights the need to create a European Territorial Monitoring System (ETMS) that on a regular basis can provide and promote territorial information and evidence to main target groups on key trends in European regions, specific type of territories, metropolitan regions, cities and towns in relation to the policy aims and priorities of European policy orientations and objectives. This ESPON project is aimed at providing a practical and operational European Territorial Monitoring System (ETMS), which builds mainly on existing statistical information, data and tools developed (database, mapping tools) within the ESPON Programme, and which can be the base for a continued monitoring of European territorial trends.